


Dagonet's Boy

by likethenight



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dagonet has always wanted a child of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dagonet's Boy

Dagonet has always wanted a child of his own. He has been present at the births of most of Bors' bastards, his quiet calm and skill at healing more welcome than Bors' nervous pacing and anxious bluster. He has helped bring them up, helped teach them to fight, and as often as not it is him to whom they run to tell their secrets, a better listener than their father. But still they are not his children. 

The boy they rescued from the oubliette at the villa of Marius Honorius, young Lucan, he is different. He is not Dagonet's son, but he clings to Dagonet as though he were the boy's long-lost father. "Do not fear me," Dagonet says, but the words are unnecessary, for Lucan trusted him implicitly from the moment Dagonet lifted him out of his cell. Dagonet travels in the wagon with him, leaving Bors to lead his horse, and tells him stories, wakens him from nightmares and comforts him when the terrors overwhelm him. Dagonet feels a connection with this boy, as if he fills a gap that has ached inside the quiet knight for as long as he can remember.

It actually hurts Dagonet, when Arthur sends the people away so that the knights may head off the Saxons at the frozen lake. He raises a hand in farewell, and the boy's answering wave tugs at his heart. _Keep him safe_ , Dagonet warns his gods, _keep my boy away from harm_. It is almost his only thought as they face the Saxon horde across the ice, seeing off these invading dogs so that the land might be a safer place for Lucan to grow up in. It drives him on, arrow after arrow, and pushes him towards his desperate last stand, driving his axe into the ice to break it up and send the enemy cascading into the freezing water to drown where they stood. And it is his last thought, as he lies on the ice, mortally wounded and soaked through, with Bors begging him to stay; as the darkness takes him, he thinks that if he could not save Lucan, he has at least bought him a fighting chance. And Dagonet smiles; he has had his taste of fatherhood, and he could not ask for more.


End file.
